C'est même pas vrai...

Les menteurs ont désormais une excuse
Mise à jour le vendredi 30 septembre 2005 à 13 h 17

Les menteurs compulsifs ont désormais une excuse médicale pour justifier leur penchant pour le mensonge. En effet, selon une étude réalisée par des chercheurs de l'université de Californie du Sud, la structure de la matière cérébrale des menteurs et des manipulateurs serait différente de celle des personnes dites normales.
Les résultats de cette étude, publiée dans le numéro d'octobre du British Journal of Psychiatry, ont été obtenus à la suite d'examens d'imagerie par résonance magnétique administrés à un échantillon de 108 volontaires.

À l'issue de ces tests, l'équipe des chercheurs Yaling Yang et Adrian Raine a découvert que la répartition des matières grise et blanche était différente dans le cerveau des menteurs compulsifs que dans celui des sujets dits normaux. Selon les chercheurs, les menteurs et les manipulateurs auraient 22 % de plus de substance blanche dans le cortex préfrontal que les autres sujets.
Cette matière blanche conduit l'influx nerveux dans le cerveau alors que la matière grise correspond aux cellules nerveuses.

Comme mentir demande beaucoup d'efforts cérébraux, selon les chercheurs, la présence d'un surplus de câblages (matière blanche) dans le cerveau de certains individus leur fournirait un avantage naturel dans la maîtrise de la fabulation et la gestion d'informations trompeuses.

Par opposition, les enfants autistes, qui ont beaucoup de difficulté à mentir, posséderaient moins de matière blanche dans leur cortex préfrontal que les menteurs ou les personnes dites normales.

Article en faveur du faucon pèlerin

Un petit article que j'ai écrit pour appuyer la candidature du faucon pèlerin comme emblème aviaire de la ville de Mont-Saint-Hilaire. Le texte a été envoyé au maire de la ville et au journal local l'Oeil Régional. L'intention est de contribuer à la sauvegarde d'une partie de notre petite et précieuse montagne.
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Oui au faucon pèlerin comme emblème aviaire de Mont-Saint-Hilaire

Dans une des nombreuses traditions amérindiennes, on raconte que le faucon pèlerin est un messager. Il peut s’envoler très très haut jusqu’à ce qu’on le perde de vue - tellement haut qu’on a déjà pensé qu’il nichait sur les nuages... Dans son envolée, il se rend jusqu’au ciel pour transmettre nos demandes au Grand Esprit et recueillir ses conseils. J’aime cette légende. Elle nous amène à penser qu’avec le retour du faucon pèlerin sur notre territoire depuis le début des années 80, c’est en fait toute notre connection avec la sagesse ancestrale que nous retrouvons.

C’est véritablement d’un retour qu’il s’agit parce le faucon pèlerin était en voie de disparition partout dans le monde. En Amérique du Nord, il n’en restait pratiquement plus aucun à l’est des Rocheuses. Une espèce presque disparue qui revient à la vie et dont la famille grandit à chaque année, c’est un rayon de soleil dans la grisaille de la dégradation de notre environnement.

Le succès du programme de réintégration des faucons pèlerins dans leur habitat naturel représente une source d’espoir et d’inspiration pour la survie et l’épanouissement de toutes les espèces qui forment l’incroyable diversité de la vie qui foisonne autour de nous. Tel le mythique phénix qui renaît de ses cendres, le faucon pèlerin nous rappelle qu’il n’est pas trop tard, que la nature peut toujours retrouver son équilibre écologique. Métaphoriquement, il est un modèle de résilience et de renouveau lorsque nous faisons face à nos propres problèmes. Comme le faucon, nous aussi pouvons nous ressourcer et reprendre de l’expansion dans notre vie.

Il y a quelques années, les citoyens de Mont-St-Hilaire ont eu la brillante idée de sauvegarder le magnifique plateau au pied de la falaise Dieppe et de préserver l’aire de nidification des faucons pèlerins. Cet oiseau spectaculaire est le plus rapide de tous les animaux atteignant des vitesses supérieures à 300 km à l’heure. Il est fier et ne craint ni homme ni bête. Quand vient le temps de défendre ses petits, il n’hésite pas à affronter le redoutable aigle royal. Le faucon pèlerin honore notre belle montagne à l’année longue. D’un point d’observation aménagé au pied de la falaise, on peut s’émerveiller devant les majestueux vols nuptiaux du printemps, les échanges de nourriture en plein vol entre le mâle et la femelle, ou l’alimentation bien orchestrée des fauconneaux. Allez-y voir! Il y a souvent sur place des observateurs d’expérience qui se feront une joie de partager avec vous la passion qu’ils éprouvent pour le faucon pèlerin.

Au Moyen Âge, à l’époque des troubadours, le faucon pèlerin était le messager de l’amour et symbole de noblesse. Aujourd’hui on le perçoit plutôt comme un être puissant, déterminé et visionnaire. Mont-Saint-Hilaire, ville de Nature et de Culture, ne pourrait être mieux servie que par cet emblème aviaire.


Gilles Arbour
Mont-Saint-Hilaire

ScienCentral: Bird Radar

Bird Radar
If you think you've got a long commute, think about all the birds heading south this fall. As this ScienCentral News video explains, scientists say some of the smallest ones use night-vision to find their way.

One of Nature's great phenomena is how tiny songbirds can make their way over thousands of miles each fall to their winter feeding grounds. Scientists have known for years that they travel by night to avoid predators, navigating by the stars and the Earth's invisible magnetic field. Yet how these birds "see" the Earth's magnetic field — a protective field that shields Earth from radiation, and is the basis for the magnetic north and south poles, but which people can't sense at all — has remained a mystery.

Now researchers based in the United States and Europe have found a brain region in night-migrating songbirds that they think can "process" information from the Earth's magnetic field and turn it into an internal compass they can see. The brain region is called "Cluster N" — "N" for night-vision because the researchers believe the birds' ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field and transform it into a navigation tool is dependent on their ability to see at night.

"What we discovered was that this brain area wasn't exclusively used for sensing magnetic fields, but instead it's being used to perhaps see at night," says Duke University neurobiologist Erich Jarvis.

Jarvis collaborated with animal navigation researcher Henrik Mouritsen from the University of Oldenburg, in Germany, to compare the brains of two distantly related types of migrating songbirds, the Garden Warbler and the European Robin, to two types of non-migrating song birds, Canaries and Zebra Finches.

"This area is only active in the night-migratory birds at night… and it's never active in the non-migratory birds, not during the day, nor during the night," says Mouritsen who published the finding with Jarvis in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mouritsen and Jarvis used a combination of behavioral observations and genetic tests to identify Cluster N. In each of their labs, they set up Plexiglass cages, each with a compass fixed on top. They monitored individual birds from each group with video cameras to see how each species behaved overall. During the day all the birds just hopped around aimlessly. But at night, both sets of migrating birds pointed themselves in a southerly direction and flapped their wings vigorously in an attempt to fly south, while the non-migrating birds made no attempt to fly away.

When the researchers compared the brains of the migrating birds to the non-migrating birds they saw a bright white area in the forebrain of the migrating birds. They only saw this highlighted area in the migrating birds at night and not during the day, so they think something about the dim light of the night sky activates Cluster N.

"It just pops out at you… there's just no way you can ignore it," says Jarvis who used a technique he developed called behavioral molecular mapping to see what was happening in the birds' brains. "When an animal performs a particular behavior the areas of the brain that are responsible for performing that behavior… induce the synthesis of certain genes in the brain. You can actually use that induction of synthesis of genes to identify the area that was active in that particular behavior."

The researchers believe night vision triggers a cascade of events in these birds' brains that allows for the transformation of the Earth's magnetic field into what Mouritsen imagines looks like a compass or a radar target superimposed over their normal vision. While they aren't entirely certain yet, they think the first step in this transformation is the entry of dim, night-sky light into the eye. That agitates a molecule called chryptochrome, one of a few known to be affected by light and which is in abundance in the nerve cells of the eye that are active when a bird is trying to navigate. Mouritsen and Jarvis think these cells carry magnetic field information to Cluster N. They believe Cluster N then converts the information into a visual image.

While more studies will be needed to prove this hypothesis, the researchers have made the first step. When they blindfolded the migratory birds, and monitored them as they had previously, the birds made no attempt to fly south at night and Cluster N was never activated. "If the [night] light is away," says Mouritsen, "Then the first step in this processes is blocked."

The researchers say it is doubtful people have a similar ability or brain region. And if we do, they say it's a vestige of the past long since discarded on the path of evolution. But, University of California at Irvine bird migration specialist and astrophysicist Thorsten Ritz says, the finding is still an "important step [in] identifying areas where further research can be done," and notes that magnetic fields are all around us and if we can figure out how birds see and process them, then we may be able to identify how magnetic fields affect us. And that Jarvis says, would be "one more discovery" made about humans based on a bird brain.

This work was published in the June 7, 2005 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and was funded by Volkswagen Stiftung Nachwuchsgruppe, University of Oldenburg, National Science Foundation's 2002 Waterman Award.

Les chauves-souris n'étaient pas au rendez-vous

Il y a quelques jours, Philippe m'a invité à participer à une soirée de capture de chauves-souris. Une idée saugrenue pour la plupart de mes amis, mais ceux qui me connaissent bien comprennent immédiatement que j'étais très heureux d'accepter.

Sans être décevante, la soirée n'a pas porté fruit. Les bestioles volaient autour de nous. On les entendaient bien aussi grâce à un détecteur d'ultra-sons. En compagnie de AnneMary Roth et de Anke Roth, deux personnes passionnées par la vie ailée et la Nature en général, assis sur une roche au bord du lac Hertel avec les étoiles comme toît, l'expérience a été savoureuse.

Les filets étaient bien tendus au coeur de leur trajet mais nos petits mammifères ont plané au-dessus en évitant notre piège. J'ai tout de même appris plusieurs choses sur la vie des chauves-souris. Par exemple, certains insectes "entendent" leurs signaux et et se laissent tomber aussitôt. D'autres ré-émettent des signaux eux-mêmes qui faussent la perception des chauves-souris. Ou encore des insectes émettent un signal qui indique qu'ils ne sont pas comestibles. On pense qu'l y aurait même des insectes tout à fait comestibles qui émettent les mêmes signaux pour tromper les chauves-souris!

Philippe a dit aussi que dans d'autres pays elles sont immenses et les gens les chassent pour les déguster...

Scientific American: Genetic Analysis Suggests Human Brain Is a Work-in-Progress

Looking at how we behave with each other and with Nature, I hope that our poor little peanut-size brains will evolved rapidly before we actually create massive extinction - including our own specie.
September 12, 2005
Genetic Analysis Suggests Human Brain Is a Work-in-Progress

The size and complexity of the human brain sets us apart from other creatures. Now results published in the current issue of the journal Science suggest that the evolution of our gray matter is ongoing.

The research, led by Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago, focused on two genes called microcephalin and ASPM. When these genes malfunction, the result is a condition called primary microcephaly, in which brain size is severely diminished. Previous studies across millions of years of primate lineages indicated that these genes had undergone accelerated evolution at times after the chimp and human lines diverged, hinting they played a role in the emergence of our impressive brain size. Lahn's team analyzed the genes in an ethnically diverse sample of 90 individuals from around the world. They found that for both genes, one variant occurred much more frequently than would be expected by chance, suggesting that natural selection is at work. The microcephalin variant arose about 37,000 years ago; the ASPM one just 5,800 years ago, the team reports.

Exactly where these changes arose and how they spread through the population remains unclear. "What we can say is that our findings provide evidence that the human brain, the most important organ that distinguishes our species, is evolutionarily plastic," Lahn remarks. "Here we have two microcephaly genes that show evidence of selection in the evolutionary history of the human species and that also show evidence of ongoing selection in humans." Indeed, Lahn predicts that if humans are still around in another million years, it is likely that their brains will exhibit significant structural differences from those seen today.

The researchers caution that the findings from two genes do not tell the whole story, however. Many other genes that have not yet been identified could influence brain size and development, Lahn notes, and further research could illuminate how natural selection has affected them as well. He explains: "We want to know how broad a trend these two genes represent."

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

A great talk from Steve Jobs - founder of Apple

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.